Meter insulation and protective barrier



Dec. 27, 1938. F, H MLLES 2,142,013

METER INSULATION AND PROTECTIVE BARRIER Filed July 1, 195? IVNVENTOR ATTORNEY,

III

Patented Dec. 27, 1938 UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE METER INSULATION AND PROTECTIVE BARRIER 2 Claims.

This invention relates to sockets and improvements or attachments for protecting from foreign contact the binding posts, female socket members and naked wire terminals carried on opposite socket terminal blocks at the well known socket S-meters now in general use.

A principal feature of the present invention may be described as guards, barriers, or shields in the general form of loops of insulating material such as a tough rigid fibre or the like, and which is fracture-proof, the inner wall of each loop having a hole or orifice through which a line wire may be passed to a binding post, to which its naked terminal is secured.

The protective guards or barriers have preferably straight walls and if made from strips of material, the ends may be overlapped and secured in any appropriate manner, and these loops, guards or barriers may be given any of many shapes in plan, i. e., looking at the edge of their walls, such as oval, hexagonal, triangular, etc.

The line terminals, binding posts and female contact members in the socket are all that require protection from watt-hour meters. The load Wire terminals do not require this protection, as will be obvious to those skilled in the art.

The socket of this invention is in no way a part of the self-contained meter, but is an independent part of the meter installation. The meter itself is a back connected plug-in type meter. The line and load wires in. no way connect with the meter itself; said wires come into the socket through rigid conduits or cables and are fastened to binding posts on the meter socket terminal blocks.

With the foregoing and other objects in view, the invention consists in the details of construction, and in the arrangement and combination of parts to be hereinafter more fully set forth and claimed.

In describing the invention in detail, reference will be had to the accompanying drawing forming part of this application, wherein like characters denote corresponding parts in the several views, and in which Figure 1 is an. inner face view of a socket casing with connected line and load wires in conduits and socket blocks carrying the terminals of said wires together with the guards for preventing current theft at the line wire terminals;

Figure 2 is a sectional side view of the socket casing and its contents;

Figure 3 is a central fragmentary sectional elevation of a meter;

Figure 4 is a detail elevation of a theft-proof guard for meter sockets showing the orifice through which a line wire is passed to its binding post; and

Figure 5 is a detail View of a guard having a one-piece or continuing wall for enclosing one side terminal of a socket switch and its associated binding post.

Referring now in detail to the drawing, It designates a part of an S-meter closed by an armor mounting or back plate I I which carries the male parts or terminals l2 of a socket connection. A socket casing is shown at [3 and, in practice, is connected to the back plate I l of the meter when the male part l2 thereof and the female contact M of the socket are connected for permitting the line current to pass in through the meter It and out to the load side.

The incoming line wires are shown at 15, the feeder l5 is grounded at l6, and the load wires are shown at IT. Made fast, as by screws or bolts I 8, (Fig. 2) within the socket casing [3 are oppositely arranged socket blocks IQ of insulating material, to which are connected by screws 20 or otherwise, the female spring contacts [4, and binding posts 2| and 22 to which the respective line and load wires are connected.

The female contacts M are connected to their respective binding posts by connected plates 23 and 24.

The guards or barriers 25 are clearly shown. in operative position in Fig. 1 as enclosing the opposite line wire terminals, said line wires as above described passing through holes 26 in the sides of said guards well above the plane of the lower and opposite sharp inside corners of the guards, in which the binding posts 2| are arranged so that no tapping wire could possibly be passed through these holes and passed over to the binding posts, for the reason that the line wires themselves nearly fill the holes 26, and further, these theft wires would have to be inserted through the conduits 21 located about centrally of the socket casing l3.

The mechanism shown in Fig. 1 as being enclosed by the guard 26 may be termed clusters of terminals, meaning the binding post, the spring contact [4 and their connections 23 and 24.

I claim:

1. In combination with a sectional meter casing, one section of which has a back plate, conductor wires leading into the casing and other conductor wires leading therefrom, clusters of terminals to which the conductors are connected, and guards Whose edges are parallel to the back plate and interposed between the said sections of the casing, each of said guards having a. hole in its wall through which a conductor extends to the cluster enclosed by the guard.

2. In combination with a sectional meter casing, one section of which has a back plate, conductor wires leading into the casing and other conductor wires leading therefrom, clusters of terminals to which the conductors are connected, and guards whose edges are parallel to the back plate and interposed between the said sections of the casing, each of said guards having a hole in its wall through which a conductor extends to the cluster enclosed by the guard, the said hole in each guard through which the conductor extends being located between the edges of said guard approximately centrally of the height of said guard FREDERICK HOLTE WILLES. 

